Hello, I tried to implement authentification to ldap via pam_ldap and I'm encountering problems - I wonder if you could be a help to my problem: The problem in brief: After a conversion towards pam_ldap I can't login anymore into my machine when the ldap server isn't started. Imagine the scenario: The machine boots (normally it doesn't) ;-) and it can't mount /var, so the slapd can't start up. As far as I've understood the sense of /etc/nsswitch.conf it determines the order of usage of fall back services, i.e. if one service fails, the next one will be consulted, and so on... So, my nsswitch.conf looks like: ... passwd: files nisplus nis ldap shadow: files nisplus nis ldap group: files nisplus nis ldap ... (I tried some variations like: ldap files, etc.) Since I'm using redhat 7.2 I used authconfig which generated this file: /etc/pam.d/system-auth ... after I instructed it to use ldap for authentification: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #%PAM-1.0 # This file is auto-generated. # User changes will be destroyed the next time authconfig is run. auth required /lib/security/pam_env.so auth sufficient /lib/security/pam_unix.so likeauth nullok auth sufficient /lib/security/pam_ldap.so use_first_pass auth required /lib/security/pam_deny.so account required /lib/security/pam_unix.so account required /lib/security/pam_ldap.so password required /lib/security/pam_cracklib.so retry=3 type= password sufficient /lib/security/pam_unix.so nullok use_authtok nis password sufficient /lib/security/pam_ldap.so use_authtok password required /lib/security/pam_deny.so session required /lib/security/pam_limits.so session required /lib/security/pam_unix.so session optional /lib/security/pam_ldap.so -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, I can login without any problems, no matter if this user is located in /etc/passwd or in the ldap People database, but when I stop slapd, I can't even log in as a /etc/passwd user (e.g. even root!). Fortunaley I had a couple of other root shells open to this machine. :) Is there any way to achieve this, to be able to login with a stopped slapd ? Besides the HOWTOS, is there any documentation which handles exactly this problem ? Thanks in advance for your help! Michael -- Michael Kress / kress@hal.saar.de / please use pgp (key on hp) http://www.michael-kress.de / http://kress.net To increase system performance press CTRL+D now. P E N G U I N S A R E C O O L.